Bull Trout Plight Worsens Since Failure To List Species Eventual Protection Will Impact Loggers, Miners Significantly

The Fish and Wildlife Service ignored its own scientists’ advice when it decided not to list the bull trout among threatened and endangered species in five Western states.

But since that decision last June, the agency’s Northwest regional boss has quietly moved the fish closer to a listing under the Endangered Species Act, upgrading the magnitude of the threat to the bull trout and concluding its plight is worsening, according to memos obtained by The Associated Press.

“There was a consensus among biologists that a vast majority of remaining bull trout populations are subject to threats” meeting the highest priority category, Regional Director Michael Spear wrote in the Feb. 1 memo from Portland.

Spear described the bull trout population as “declining.”

Federal protection for the fish could have significant implications for loggers, miners, livestock grazers and fishermen in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Nevada.

Unlike Northwest salmon species, jeopardized primarily by massive dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers, the bull trout’s plight is due largely to land-management activities along rivers and streams, Fish and Wildlife says.

The ramifications are greatest for forests in the northern Rocky Mountains, where logging is blamed for increased sedimentation in the bull trout’s spawning streams.

Conservationists who are suing the government over failure to protect the fish say the Clinton administration is breaking the same laws that the Reagan and Bush administrations violated when they denied listing petitions for the northern spotted owl in the 1980s.

Then-Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. finally listed the bird in 1990 after a federal judge ruled previous decisions were based more on politics than science.

“Illegal political influence has been used in denying bull trout Endangered Species Act protection,” said Mike Bader, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies in Missoula.

Fish and Wildlife Service Director Mollie Beattie denied that contention.

“The president - nobody has ever contacted me in any attempt to influence a listing of bull trout and I’ve certainly never discussed it with the White House,” she said in an interview Thursday.

Fish and Wildlife issued an unusual ruling on the bull trout last summer, finding the fish warranted federal protection but that listing was precluded because species facing greater threats to their survival were on the waiting list.

But agency documents obtained by the AP show the final ruling did not reflect the concerns of scientists who completed a review of the bull trout’s status in February 1994.

On a scale of 1 to 12, the statusreview team based in Olympia recommended a “priority 2” for the bull trout, indicating a “high” and “imminent” threat of extinction.

In June, Fish and Wildlife gave the fish a “priority 9,” which indicates a “moderate to low” threat.

In raising the threat category to “high” - a priority 3 - Spear cited threats to the bull trout from logging and road building, hydropower and irrigation diversions, mining and livestock grazing.

Priorities 1 through 3 all signify a “high” and “imminent” threat. The distinctions are determined by the creature’s status as a species or subspecies.

Citing findings by a new statusreview team. Spear’s memo said efforts to help the fish so far “have not been sufficient to prevent past and ongoing habitat degradation and population decline and fragmentation.”

“It was the (new) team’s conclusion that the magnitude of the threats had increased,” said Trish Klahr, a fishery biologist for the agency in Boise who is in charge of a population review that will be used to decide in June whether to propose protection for the bull trout.

“There has been a lot of talk and the laying of groundwork for protections, but there certainly hasn’t been any action on the ground to remove the threats so far,” Klahr said in a telephone interview Friday.

Jamie Rappaport Clark, assistant director for ecological services at agency headquarters here, said the change in the threat category moves the bull trout closer to a listing.

Clark said it was “not entirely unusual” for the agency to overrule the status-review team last summer.

But Bader accused the White House of influencing the decision after fielding complaints from Western governors and Congress members about the possible impact on logging and mining operations.

“These documents prove there has been willful and blatant illegal activity,” he said. “Going from a `2’ to a `9’ was outrageous. They had no rationale for doing that. They considered political and economic factors.”

Fish and Wildlife considers the bull trout, like the spotted owl, an “indicator species” whose condition reflects the health of the ecosystem.

“The scientific evidence is so clear. The field biologists are trying to do the right thing,” Bader said. “We’re seeing exactly the same patterns of behavior as in the Reagan and Bush administrations.”

Beattie said the bull trout was kept off the list last year because the Forest Service had agreed “to take conservation actions that will make the listing unnecessary.

“What we are trying to achieve is conservation of species. We are not trying to achieve listings,” she said Thursday.

Bader says the administration is only postponing the inevitable.

“Legally, they eventually will have to list this species according to the law and they are stalling. It’s another year’s worth of time that the bull trout doesn’t have.”